The last time youth unemployment was this low in America, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were duking it out at the top of the charts with Paperback Writer and Paint It Black, and The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly was playing in every cinema in the land.
Good times to be a young person, no doubt. In the following decades, times became tougher, and youth unemployment climbed ever upwards, peaking at a shocking 26.5% for 16-19 year olds under — you guessed it — the community organizer from Chicago, President Obama, who promised hope and change and delivered mass unemployment and skyrocketing debt.
When candidate Trump promised to make America great again, and wind back the clock to the winning years of American economic glory, liberals accused him of being racist (huh?) and dumb.
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Well, those same liberals have egg on their face now, because the unemployment rate among young Americans has fallen to its lowest level in more than 50 years under President Trump, just months after the jobless rate for black Americans touched an all-time record low, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Of Americans between 16 and 24 years old actively looking for work this summer, 9.2% were unemployed in July, the Labor Department said Thursday, a drop from the 9.6% youth unemployment rate in July 2017. It was the lowest midsummer joblessness rate for youth since July 1966.
Wall Street Journal reports: One of those finding work was Teandre Blincoe, 17, who placed in a job this summer in an information technology division at Humana, a health insurance company based in Louisville, Ky., by KentuckianaWorks, which has partnered with JPMorgan Chase & Co. to place low-income youth in summer jobs.
With his first job under his belt, Mr. Blincoe said he would feel more confident looking for employment in the future. “I have a really solid idea of how I can present myself and actually get a job.”
Low unemployment among young people shows that in a tight labor market more opportunities are opening to groups that historically have struggled to find jobs.
Similarly, the unemployment rate among older Americans who don’t have a high-school diploma fell to a record low this year. The jobless rate also fell sharply for those who completed high school but never attended college. Among racial groups, the unemployment rate for Latinos fell to 4.5% in July, the lowest rate on records back to the 1970s.
The jobless rate for black Americans touched a record low this year before rising in the past two months. For black youth, the jobless rate ticked up this summer to 16.5% from 16.2% in 2017, meaning this segment of the population hasn’t benefited as much as many others looking for work.
While millions of young people continue to enter the labor force in the summer months, the labor-force participation rate among young Americans—a measure of how many people are actively seeking employment—is still low by historical standards.
An employee folds clothes inside a J.C. Penney store in Peoria, Ill. PHOTO: DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG NEWS
In July, the labor-force participation rate was 60.6% among young Americans, the same rate as last year and the highest since 2009. In 1989, the summer youth labor-force participation rate was 77.5%, and it has declined since.
Baxter Dmitry
Email: baxter@thepeoplesvoice.tv
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